Promise Me
by ChemicallyEnhanced
Summary: Levi always keeps his promises. T for swearing.


Whoo-hoo, my first SnK fic! :D –blows party streamers- Let's do this, guys.

Disclaimer: NO, I DON'T OWN IT BUT MY GOD IF ONLY I DID

* * *

" _Corporal, promise me something."_

" _What?"_

 _He looked determined, hands clenched. Leaning over the wooden table between us as if it would make his request any more imperative. "Promise me that no matter what happens tomorrow, you'll be the one to kill me."_

 _Confusion. "You must have short-term memory. If you recall, when we first met, I already told you that, idiot."_

 _He shook his head. "No, I want you to_ promise _me, Corporal. Only you."_

 _I clicked my tongue and slung an arm on the back of my chair. Nobody else was around so it'd be alright if I loosen up for a moment. "'Only me?' That sounds awfully insolent of you. Just like a brat."_

" _Please, Corporal!" He insisted, eyes gleaming with…something close to desperation. This kid...was he really that stubborn to let his end be at the hands of somebody who didn't have the overwhelming desire to kill him at all times? "I..." his hands trembled, and he clenched them tighter. "I can't let myself end in the MP prisons. Tortured or getting my limbs chopped off or what. If they catch me, then all the work I've done for humanity has been for nothing. I would just end up back in the same place as I was a year ago."_

" _Ah…huh." The corner of my lip twitched up into an almost-smirk. "You've got some guts, brat."_

" _But I—"_

 _I stood up with a sigh, dusting particles off the white uniform pants of the Survey Corps. "Alright, then. I'll abide by that promise, since you'll just keep whining about it."_

" _T-thank you, Corporal." He smiled, relieved, and I patted his shoulder in a sign of understanding. I couldn't help but grip it a bit tighter, smirking when he flinched in pain._

" _Next time, don't be so presumptuous."_

" _A-ah!" He clicked his heels together and took on the salute, hands faced outwards in fists, one over his heart and the other around his back. "Yes, sir!"_

* * *

With a deep breath in and out, I spun forward from a branch with my 3D Maneuver Gear and sliced the nape of the 10 meter Titan cleanly off, where it fell with a loud _Thump_ shortly after. Pressing the right handle of my sword, I changed gears and moved to the right, gas hissing from the tank behind me and projecting me forward. So far, so good.

It was a routine 'cleaning', as Erwin liked to call it, given my penchant (read: obsession) with cleaning things. Tch. It wasn't that much of a problem. But some of the lookout from the ramparts above the castle's ramparts had seen a crowd of Titans swarming in the deep forests not too far from our hideout, so of course, we had to go kill them off before they reached us.

The job seemed to be going well. There hadn't been any whistles or emergency sounds. We each carried a whistle to alert the others if there was some kind of extra trouble or any real emergency, say if someone had run out of gas. We didn't need any more unnecessary deaths after…well. Just shove that deep inside and remember that they died fighting. That's all.

I hooked myself on the side of a tree, 50 meters up and looked out over the part of the forest that I could see. Off to the left I could vaguely see Potato Girl swinging through the branches and taunting a Titan with wide eyes and stretched lips, and ahead in the distance that large blonde brat—Reiner, was his name?—chop the nape off, a bit roughly to my standards. It was almost…relaxing. Killing Titans, slicing flesh. It was one of my hobbies, anyways, besides other things.

 _CLEANING_ , I could hear Erwin cough behind his hand in my head. Pfft.

In one second, I heard the leaves rustling in the silence, and in the next, a loud scream. Quicker than the human eye could see, I'd set off towards that sound. What was happening? Was someone being eaten? If there was, then I would not show any mercy.

But no, when I arrived to the source of the scream, I was faced with a sight that had my stomach clenching in dread. There was the small blond that Eren was friends with, upper arm bloody and panicking, rushing from branch to branch as he tried to avoid the Titan's enormous hand, barely missing when it broke a part of the tree off. It wasn't just any Titan, though.

It was Eren.

 _Shit. Shit shit shit shit_ , I cursed in my mind, already preparing for the best way to bring him down without getting anyone else injured. Why did he turn Titan? This wasn't some fucking all-out war against them. It was only a routine cleaning. It was only supposed to be quick, easy, and simple.

Another scream, this time in pain. _Was this what Eren meant last night when he was spouting all that nonsense?_ I thought as I moved closer to where he was creating havoc. That Ackerman girl with the dark hair was hovering a few feet behind him, close to the nape of his neck and his ear, sounding as if she were trying to bring him back to his own mind.

 _Won't work. Won't work won't—_ "Ackerman!" I shouted. "Get away from there! You'll get yourself killed!"

She glared, clenching her teeth. Christ, woman, in the matter of life and death, could you put aside your petty hatred for me and follow orders? " _Sir_ , Armin did this before, so it'll work if we just talk him out of it! I'm sure of it!"

"Are you disobeying me right now?! There's no time for this shit, move aside!"

She looked like she was about to argue some more, but, very reluctantly, she zipped past Eren's head, landing safely and smoothly onto another branch. Fuck, this was bad. I had to stop him, stop him before anybody found out and the MP finds yet another reason to take him from us. Who knows what they would do with 'Humanity's Last Hope' if they got ahold of him?

An irritated noise hissing from between my teeth, I made my decision. I had to cut him out, and very quickly. The other new recruits of the Survey Corps shouted and yelled up ahead, eyes widening as they saw Eren crash through the trees, not stopping for anything. With a firm press my left handle, I zoomed to Eren's left and jerked myself in front of the nape, releasing the grappling hooks to balance precariously on top of the burning skin. Damn, that was going to hurt for a while. Raising double swords, I sliced messily into the tough muscle, not even caring at this point if I cut off a limb or two. This was going too far. After what seemed like minutes of cutting, I finally saw the edge of the pale tan shirt that Eren always wore, and then the back of his body, still glued to the Titan body. I swiftly cut the excess away and literally ripped him out, wincing in the back of my mind as the muscle from inside the Titan's neck tore some skin away from Eren's face and arms.

Hopping off the Titan's body, which was now falling forward, I rocketed through the air, feeling it bite at my ears as I landed on top of a tree branch, laying Eren down against the trunk. I couldn't hear anybody else coming just yet, and good thing, too. Eren's eyes opened just slightly, which surprised me. Usually after turning Titan, he would stay unconscious for a solid few minutes or so. And that wasn't even the most surprising part.

 _Is he…crying?_

"C-corporal…" he rasped, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes. "Remember…what I said yesterday?"

"You shitty brat, nothing will happen now if we just keep quiet. You didn't cause any…massive damage."

"Did I really?" Did he? I didn't know; I was so focused on just getting him out of that body first that I didn't even check to see if the others were alive yet. Come to think of it…

I blew my whistle, and the rest of what was left of the cleaning-up team came rushing forward. One, two, three…only 7 left? I froze. We had set out with 16. Did Eren really kill _over half of them?_ Turning back to him, I saw that he still hadn't stopped crying.

"Kill me, Corporal. I killed all those people, and I would have done even worse, if you hadn't cut me out." He just lay there, looking so sad and pathetic that I couldn't help but give a little bit of pity out to him. "I served my time for humanity already."

"E-eren?! What are you talking about?!" Ackerman asked, panicked, from another branch not too far off.

I placed in another blade. That's what he wanted, that idiot, didn't he? I shoved away my own panic at having to do this. I _took in_ Eren for a reason, and to think that he'd die now because he couldn't control his Titan, instead of dying at the _hands_ of one of those horrible beasts, almost never crossed my mind. Almost. "Any last words, brat?"

"EREN!" Ackerman shouted, moving forward to try to keep me back.

"Ackerman!" She didn't slow down, and I turned to face her. "Ackerman, take the rest of the team back to the castle." My voice was cold, it was steel. I couldn't hesitate right now. Eren had lost control again. I couldn't let my guard down this time.

"YOU—"

" _Now._ "

I turned back to Eren, and he smiled as I approached him with my blade, raising his up to the side of his neck. "Now, any last words?"

And of all things he could've done—yell, hate me, struggle—he only laughed, and smiled, and I had to wonder what the hell this kid had seen in his life to just take his death so easily. "Thank you for saving me… _Levi_." I didn't even get angry at him for saying my name so freely like that, because by then his head had rolled off his unburdened shoulders and to the ground, far below.

Did he deserve a fate like this? No, he was just a kid. A stupid, 16 year old kid who wasn't supposed to be born into this kind of life, given this kind of fate.

My hand clenched tightly around the handle of his sword, so tightly that my knuckles turned white. I let myself grieve, for just a few minutes, breath shaky and wanting to cry so badly but I couldn't, before swiveling back towards the castle.

* * *

 _12 days later…_

I rewrapped the bandages around my hand in my room, back at headquarters in Trost. After that…incident, everyone was furious. Mostly Ackerman and the rest of the 104th. Erwin, too. The MP was, unsurprisingly, smug with those stupid smirks on their faces. There was another court session, in which instead of Eren being chained to the middle to decide his fate, we had to decide what humanity's fate was now, that our supposed 'last hope' was gone.

Acker—Mikasa wasn't there. Neither was Arlert. I'd only watched on unfeelingly as they discussed topics that I had no interest in, and as Erwin sat tiredly at the head, arguing his own points that didn't seem to have as much conviction as they used to.

Who knew the death of one brat was enough to change everything?

Now our plan was just to try to make it to Eren's basement, as his key was still in his room, to see if there was _anything_ we could salvage from his father's scientific material. Hanji would have a field day about it, after she was done grieving. Though our chances were slim as to be almost non-existent.

I sighed as I stepped out, walking towards that one patch of land we dubbed as 'Eren's honorary resting spot'. We cremated the body as soon as we could bring ourselves to retrieve it from the tree, where I had left it. For a while, none of us could speak about it. There was only a thick cloud of misery over everyone's heads, over everyone who was able to meet the hothead teenager that was Eren Jaeger.

Finally stopping next to the tree on that one patch of land, I sat down, and stared at the slab of stone, pretending that Eren was slouched there before I started speaking.

"Oi, Eren. Today Armin smiled for the first time in two weeks. It was when he talked about how you used to stand up for him in fights when you guys were little. He cried afterwards, though, so I guess that sort of defeats the idea. He smiled, though. You must be happy about that." I sat back and sighed again, staring at the wide, wide sky. "They all still miss you, of course. Most of them are still angry with me for doing that. I understand where they're coming from. It's not the first time in my life that something like that's happened. Ah, but I'm not here to talk about sad things. The past is the past, isn't it, and we all need to move on sometime. Such is the nature of the world."

For some inexplicable reason, I felt such a deep sadness well up inside me, and I had to cough to get rid of the painful lump in my throat.

"Hey…do you remember that time it was raining like shitbricks, and you came in and smeared mud absolutely everywhere in the castle? I had you clean that overnight, even, after yelling at you for an hour." I paused, wondering where this sentimental feeling was coming from. "It's..." A small drop landed on my hand, and I looked down, where more drops joined their brother drop. _Fuck, I told myself I wouldn't…_ Quickly swiping at my eyes with the corner of my cravat, I let out a derisive chuckle. "Look at 'Humanity's Strongest' now, Eren. The great 'Lance Corporal of the Survey Corps'. What a shitty fate. What a shitty ending." I let out another chuckle, and salty water just kept coming. I remember the last time I cried, which was over a year ago, when the original 'Levi's Squad' had died.

"You little shit. Why did you lose control like that? I thought all those damn practices and trainings that we did over the past year were enough for you to keep your head in that Titan body. It's your own fault for letting me get attached, you know? I knew at the beginning that I wasn't going to get attached to such a stupid brat like you, but I did anyways. What does that say about me?"

I laughed and cried into my own puddle of misery. "Fuck. I wish you hadn't lost control."

Distantly, I could feel the lanky arms of a certain brat wrap themselves around me, and long fingers wiping tears away.

"You're such a shitty brat for leaving me alone."

* * *

A/N: Um. So this is like horribly cliché and bad and it didn't turn out as good as I thought it'd be, but WHATEVER it's my first SnK fic, so don't blame me. Just like the first Sekaiichi Hatsukoi fic I wrote. xD It turned out sort of okay, I think. But I'm going to continue writing for this fandom, so I can get better at their characterizations and things. I ship Levi and Eren, by the way. Just a heads-up in case you guys like Eren x Mikasa or Levi x Erwin or something.

FINALLY I'M BRANCHING OUT TO DIFFERENT FANDOMS. –celebrates-

-ChemicallyEnhanced


End file.
